140 Motivational Quotes for Work

As humans, we ought to be active in our daily lives. We thrive on having to work on something, either for necessity or for leisure. Surely, work can be tiring but doing nothing is not a better option. So to those who are working hard or to those that are just getting started, here are some motivational quotes for work to fuel up your day.

Motivational Quotes for Work

1. When you are inspired in your work, everything seems to fall into place. – Wayne Dyer

2. Work brings man to life, sets him in motion. Work is man in action doing things. Nothing happens until people go to work. Work creates the world we live in. – Wilfred Peterson

3. Positive thinking is like fuel to the car. It will keep you energized throughout your work. – Abder-Rahman Ali

4. . . . take pride in what you are doing and finish it from start to finish. You are going to find that people will notice it and you can take some pride in your work. – Mike C. Adams

5. If you must work hard, work hard to find a smart solution. – Alexander Woo

6. Never wish for what you can work for. – Catherine Pulsifer

7. The solution is within range, but what you’re currently doing isn’t working, and you need to change your approach. – Stephen Hall

8. You can get the kind of results that you are looking for in life if you are willing to work smart to achieve them. – Les Brown

9. But the more work you put in at the beginning, the faster your goal will be achieved. – Sean Lysaght

10. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men. – Colossians 3:23 ESV

11. It’s life. You don’t figure it out. You just climb up on the beast and ride. – Rebecca Wells

12. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig. – Cheryl Strayed

13. A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. – Charles Darwin

14. We can’t take any credit for our talents. It’s how we use them that counts. – Madeleine L’Engle

15. There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere. – Jane Austen

16. If I had nine hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first six sharpening my axe. – Abraham Lincoln

17. Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you. – Thomas Jefferson

18. It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe. – Muhammad Ali

19. You will never plough a field if you only turn it over in your mind. – Irish Proverb

20. None preaches better than the ant, and she says nothing. – Benjamin Franklin

Motivational Quotes for Work

21. Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

22. This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play. – Alan Watts

23. The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope. – Barack Obama

24. I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. – Douglas Adams

25. Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success. – Louisa May Alcott

26. Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction. – Anne Frank

27. No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. – Theodore Roosevelt

28. We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done. – Alan Turing

29. If you care about what you do and work hard at it, there isn’t anything you can’t do if you want to. – Jim Henson

30. “Go and get your things,” he said. “Dreams mean work.” – Paulo Coelho

31. Work is a blessing. God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, just as it is the experiences of hunger and thirst that make food and drink such pleasures. – Elisabeth Elliot

32. Even though your time on the job is temporary, if you do a good enough job, your work there will last forever. – Idowu Koyenikan

33. Anything is better than stagnation. – Arthur Conan Doyle

34. Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose. – Leonardo da Vinci

35. No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. – Martin Luther King Jr.

36. Work like you don’t need the money. Dance like no one is watching. And love like you’ve never been hurt. – Mark Twain

37. If you don’t want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won’t have to work. – Ogden Nash

38. The greatest weariness comes from work not done. – Eric Hoffer

39. People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. – Frederick Douglass

40. When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well. – Thomas Merton

41. The most successful people always work much harder than others. – Brian Tracy

42. God is often at work in ways we cannot see, and He is patient. – Melanie Wilber

43. Work leads to greater success than nonwork. Hard work leads to greatness. – Greg Henry Quinn

44. All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work. – Calvin Coolidge

Motivational Quotes for Work

45. Someday is not a day of the week. – Janet Daily

46. Do or do not. There is no try. – Yoda

47. When given an opportunity, deliver excellence and never quit. – Robert Rodriguez

48. I used to work at the unemployment office. I hated it, because when they fired me, I had to show up to work anyway. – Wally Wang

49. Our labour preserves us from three great evils — weariness, vice, and want. – Voltaire

50. There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it. – Andrew Jackson

51. The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like. – Steven Pressfield

52. Pray like it all depends on God, but work like it all depends on you. – Dave Ramsey

53. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. – George Bernard Shaw

54. Work diligently. Work hard. Focus. Perform as if you are at the Olympics. One day, unexpectedly, it will start paying off. – Joan Marques

55. There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither. – Alan Cohen

56. Only super-efforts count. – G.I. Gurdjieff

57. If a man does not work passionately – even furiously – at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God. – George Lois

58. But maybe it’s the laboring that gives you shape. Might the most fulfilling times be those spent solo at your tasks, literally immersed or not, when you are able to uncover the smallest surprises and unlikely details of some process or operation that in turn exposes your proclivities and prejudices both? – Chang-rae Lee

59. Stop sleeping, Get to work! You will have much time to sleep when you die. – Michael Bassey Johnson

60. Prayer will never do our work for us; what it will do is to strengthen us for work which must be done. – William Barclay

61. You were saved not by work, but for work. Do it till all is done. By your Inventions, Innovations, Initiatives, Improvements, Involvements, Imaginations, Information, Interventions and Inspirations… Go the extra mile and dare to do it. – Israelmore Ayivor

62. The value of doing something does not lie in the ease or difficulty, the probability or improbability of its achievement, but in the vision, the plan, the determination and the perseverance, the effort and the struggle which go into the project. Life is enriched by aspiration and effort, rather than by acquisition and accumulation. – Helen Nearing

63. One cannot use the life to interpret the work. But One can use the work to interpret the life. – Susan Sontag

64. Of course it would be hard. But I remembered what my nurseryman grandfather used to say when I didn’t want to go to school: half the work in the world was done by people who didn’t feel so good today. – Rollo Romig

65. You attract poverty when you lack value for time. – Sunday Adelaja

66. My life changed the day I moved beyond just wishing for things and I started earning them. That is the day I learned that we don’t get what we wish for, we get what we work for. – Steve Maraboli

67. Nothing is born into this world without labor. – Rob Liano

68. There are plenty of people dragging themselves miserably through the world, because they are clogged and fettered with work for which they have no fitness… I can’t help believing that nothing is better than to find one’s work early and hold fast to it, and put all one’s heart into it. – Sarah Orne Jewett

69. The reward of a work is to have produced it; the reward of effort is to have grown by it. – Antonin Sertillanges

70. There is never a traffic jam created from people going the extra mile. – Jeff Dixon

Motivational Quotes for Work

71. Because I’m a man who works, who knows what a human being is like inside, who knows that every human being has his worth, and who wants the world to be governed by work and not by opinions about work. – Wilhelm Reich

72. Work on. Work as if every time you started with and every time you finish. – Leopold von Sacher Masoch

73. Ideas do not work.. It is YOU who has to do the work…. – Manoj Arora

74. When you do your work happily, work will disappear. – Mehmet Murat ildan

75. Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there. – A.W. Tozer

76. Assiduity, it means sit down until you do it. Commit yourself to your work and study. – Lucas Remmerswaal

77. I had also developed my own culture. Work. Over the years, I had taken labor as my companion and had moved everything else to the side. – Mitch Albom

78. Doing something later is not automatically the same as doing something better. – Meg Jay

79. Believe that you are the best at what you do. And work hard on your abilities, to make it true. – Ellen J. Barrier

80. I feel like every project I work on is a dream project, so long as I am learning. – Simeon Kondev

81. Work hard for what you want because it won’t come to you without a fight. You have to be strong and courageous and know that you can do anything you put your mind to. If somebody puts you down or criticizes you, just keep on believing in yourself and turn it into something positive. – Leah LaBelle

82. Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along. – George Herbert

83. You can control two things: your work ethic and your attitude about anything. – Ali Krieger

84. Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work. – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

85. Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it. – Michael Jordan

86. If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. – Bruce Lee

87. Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best. – Theodore Isaac Rubin

88. Whatever you go into, you have to go in there to be the best. There’s no formulas. It’s all about passion and honesty and hard work. It might look glamorous, but it takes a lot of hard work. The blessing with the arts is that you can do it forever. – Hugh Masekela

89. While you’re going through this process of trying to find the satisfaction in your work, pretend you feel satisfied. Tell yourself you had a good day. Walk through the corridors with a smile rather than a scowl. Your positive energy will radiate. If you act like you’re having fun, you’ll find you are having fun. – Jean Chatzky

90. Leave your ego at the door every morning, and just do some truly great work. Few things will make you feel better than a job brilliantly done. – Robin S. Sharma

91. Life is tough, and things don’t always work out well, but we should be brave and go on with our lives. – Suga

92. In life, we work not to become successful but to enjoy the journey and gain experience. – Debasish Mridha MD

93. The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today. – Elbert Hubbard

94. Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing. – Thomas A. Edison

95. If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us. – Jim Rohn

96. Work hard. And have patience. Because no matter who you are, you’re going to get hurt in your career and you have to be patient to get through the injuries. – Randy Johnson

97. There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there. – Indira Gandhi

Motivational Quotes for Work

98. Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work. – H. L. Hunt

99. I feel like a tiger right now. There’s nothing impossible if you get up and work for it. – Michael Flatley

100. Education and work are the levers to uplift a people. – W. E. B. Du Bois

101. All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today. – Pope Paul VI

102. Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert. – B. C. Forbes

103. The beginning is the most important part of the work. – Plato

104. Whatever you want to do, do with full passion and work really hard towards it. Don’t look anywhere else. There will be a few distractions, but if you can be true to yourself, you will be successful for sure. – Virat Kohli

105. Every job is good if you do your best and work hard. A man who works hard stinks only to the ones that have nothing to do but smell. – Laura Ingalls Wilder

106. For every two minutes of glamour, there are eight hours of hard work. – Jessica Savitch

107. I enjoy the work, I enjoy every minute of my professional life. – Jose Mourinho

108. It’s good to test yourself and develop your talents and ambitions as fully as you can and achieve greater success; but I think success is the feeling you get from a job well done, and the key thing is to do the work. – Peter Thiel

109. Quality is pride of workmanship. – W. Edwards Deming

110. The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more. – Jonas Salk

111. I think goals should never be easy, they should force you to work, even if they are uncomfortable at the time. – Michael Phelps

112. When you have balance in your life, work becomes anentirely different experience. There is a passion that moves you to a whole new level of fulfillment and gratitude, and that’s when you can do your best… for yourself and for others. – Cara Delevingne

113. Nothing is given to you. Everything is earned. You have to have that mindset that you have to work every single day. Learn every single day. – Saquon Barkley

114. Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. – Alexander Graham Bell

Motivational Quotes for Work

115. Don’t do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts. – Henry Rollins

116. Just because you will not see the work completed does not mean you are free not to take it up. – Greg Iles

117. Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain times, at others, in devout reading. – Benedict of Nursia

118. Prayer not only teaches and strengthens one for work, work teaches and strengthens one for prayer. – Andrew Murray

119. I must work hard – not to climb the ladder, but to do important work. – Satya Nadella

120. When your work is monitored by you 24 hours a day without even receiving payments for that, and that satisfies you, you can sign a contract with success. – Alan Maiccon

121. In a harsh, cruel world where success is only measured by financial income, the higher moral values are ‎getting lost and forgotten. No one counts your efforts, good deeds, struggle, and giving unless if these ‎deeds make money. Money nowadays, unfortunately, is the fake God everyone follows. If you make solid profits you are a human being worth respect, but if you are struggling and working so hard in life, ‎yet your struggle and good deeds don’t make you the money you need, you only worth neglecting.‎ For all those who struggle to live another day by doing the right thing, hang in there, God is with you and better days are coming too by God’s will.‎ – Noora Ahmed Alsuwaidi

122. Action This Day! – Winston S. Churchill

123. Work is important in life because without work, we are useless on this planet. Our actions connect us with the world and give a purpose to our lives. We feel valued when we do something for the society. – Awdhesh Singh

124. We simply need to be aware of our capable self and accordingly, manage it in such a way that our efforts always complement our skills, competence, and dedication to perform. – Dr Prem Jagyasi

125. If you got a plan, make it work. – Giovannie de Sadeleer

126. Bored with daily routine work? Common feeling! However, it’s the routine which bores us, not the work; work can be very interesting once we understand its logic; change your routine, try performing your daily tasks in a different manner, sign your work as a masterpiece. Artists are remembered painters aren’t. – Shahenshah Hafeez Khan

127. Don’t hope for better times, work towards them. – Mike Yanek

Motivational Quotes for Work

128. Start today. Start now and just imagine where you will be one year from now. It will be amazing. – Leigh Shulman

129. No more wanting. It’s time to work. No more hoping. It’s time to help yourself. No more dreaming. It’s time to do. No more waiting for something good to happen to us, it’s time to make something good happen through us. – Toni Sorenson

130. Live, work, act. Don’t sit here and brood. – Henrik Ibsen

131. Don’t worry about being a star, worry about doing good work, and all that will come to you. – Ice Cube

132. I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and you laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

133. The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. – Vince Lombardi

134. I try to keep in mind that it’s a long journey. It’s not a race. It’s about staying focused, continuing to do good work, make my family and community proud; that’s all I really want to do… and pay my bills. – Gina Rodriguez

135. Once you start a working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest. – Chanakya

136. When you see validation for a life’s work and dedication, it’s a beautiful day. – Mary Gauthier

137. Work as though you would live forever, and live as though you would die today. Go another mile! – Og Mandino

138. All honest work is good work; it is capable of leading to self-development, provided the doer seeks to discover the inherent lessons and makes the most of the potentialities for such growth. – Paramahansa Yogananda

139. The older you get, the better you have to look, the higher you have to kick, the harder you have to work. – Salman Khan

140. Honor lies in honest toil. – Grover Cleveland

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